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Month: February 2013

I had my grandson over last night and as with all children it is fun to listen to him working out the truth or why sometimes people don’t tell him the truth. We were talking about big numbers like how one hundred was a big number until he learned about a million. But he remembered that his Mom had told him that 3 was a big number at sometime. I told him 3 was a big number when you are talking about a 3-year-old child. 3 years is a long time to be alive when you are 3 not so much when you are 7. We talked about how truth changes as understanding does. Big topic for a little boy.

But it did make me think about truth and arbitrary truths. When someone is trying to convince you of the rightness of their truth, is it truth or is it an arbitrary truth? Everyone believes what they believe as truth, fundamentalist of any religion will explain to you their truth as the truth. A believer in creationism believes it as truth, time travelers, they believe its truth, flu shot enthusiasts, vitamin believers, you get it. Is it all truth? Is it truth because you believe it? Does your believing in something make it truth? I mean really across the board, yes its truth? Hmm, I wonder.

Seems to me that thinking things through would be one method of truth fact-finding, until you are talking to an ice sales man while living in Alaska, that is. Someone, actually anyone with great speaking skills, can make most people believe what ever they want. My children were told all kinds of things when they were young, was that truth? I was told lots of stuff when I was young, none of that was truth. As a matter of fact I am less inclined to believe in the truth anymore as I am also an amazing sales person with plenty of book knowledge and street smarts of my own. I really can’t be told anything anymore. So I filter truth through my knowledge of truth and given new evidence I can change my mind. Power of thinking.

It’s a sad fact that most people will not get off their lazy butt to investigate a truth for themselves. If the Today show says it’s real, well then, it must be real. If Brian Williams sayings something is real, is it truth? Must be it’s on TV. If a spiritual teacher says something we make that a truth. Why, are they closer to God some how? If Japan has a nuclear event and we stop talking about it, does it stop affecting everyone just because we looked away? Is the water safe, our food, our air, does anyone care?

I am teaching my grandson the fine art of discernment. Yes, at 7 because frankly it cannot begin early enough. To understand truth is to have already turned on your very own truth monitor. There can be no hope for a society that does not think for itself. Once we have been hoodwinked by some leader who has proclaimed themselves ruler of the universe, it’s over people, get out your slave wear. To be free is to think for yourself. In our society of so-called freedom, this freedom only works when we use it. If we blindly follow every recommendation knowing it is not right for us, who is the slave now? How many of you went running out for the flu shot got the flu anyway but said oh well, Yah not me.

How many of you pop pills because of someone’s recommendation? How many of you eat certain foods avoid other foods but only at someone else’s recommendation? When I was young my mother told me that if I ate onions they would make me sick because they made her sick. So I believed her until the day they smelled so good I had to see for myself. Yah, I love onions, tons of onions, on everything, in everything. It was not a truth for me. It was an arbitrary truth. So I teach my grandson how to think for himself.

The other day my grandson got mad at the cat for scratching him, he blamed the cat, was pissed off at the cat, but on further review someone had been teasing the cat with a toy and Mr Big paw got him good. As I got him to see that getting mad at the cat for playing the game was not fair I told him he had to learn to play with Mr big paw from a distance, for safety sake. Him getting hurt was not the cats fault, though it was the cat that had hurt him, the cat was being a cat I told him. Cats fault, arbitrary truth, his fault, truth. Not always a fun thing to learn but most important.

Those who believe their truth to be the truth can only be told other wise by someone who can counter their truth with a better truth, a wiser truth. All people with fairness as part of their make up will see truth and want the truth. It is only the human whose desire it is to manipulate others to their truth for material gain that are lying to us all and calling it truth. Look around that’s happening everywhere. I would like for my grandson to see truth and not the BS someone is selling. I want our leaders to see truth and not what someone is selling. I want our teachers to teach the truth and discernment so our children will learn to judge for themselves and not just by the party line their parents, guardians, preachers, teachers or leaders are selling.

What makes this country great is that we get the choice. We can use our heads and learn to see and feel the truth and not be sold an arbitrary truth. We have truth at our disposal if we will use it. Teach your children well. The truth is out there make sure what you stand for is a truth and not an arbitrary truth. Funny thing about the truth, it is always the truth, a lie will always be a lie.

Like this:

Last post was the accumulation of months perhaps years of needing and wanting help. The eternal idea that somehow, someway, I would get answers to some pressing issues that frankly have stopped me in my tracks. Like a bad diagnosis, or news you can’t run from sometimes shit happens and you just have to take it but I haven’t wanted to. The measure of a person being how they take it not how fast they run from it. The rub is wanting to deny it or look away from it, or blame somebody else for it. Not going to work!

Life is hard of this there can be no doubt. Live long enough and this statement becomes old news, life is hard. It is the spiritual tradition that helps us understand that we cannot control things as much as we can control our response. Bad things are going to happen and stubbing your toe can be the least of it, a full on life melt down can be some of the worse. Its life, ask any one suffering because at one point it is all of us. Those who suffer the most know this the most. Suffering becomes a choice because in every life comes suffering, how you deal with it is where your choice lies.

Here’s where asking for help has led me. Nowhere! But this is what I have learned. The human being has great potential and for most it stays locked away. We live lives filled with fear or with ridiculous expectations and then we feel defeated and sit down waiting for life to end. We smoke ourselves to death or do drugs, practice avoidance, deal in anger, it’s all bull shit. Asking for help can only open doors but no one can force us through. Asking for help and then being open to how it comes is living on the edge.

I live with a volatile situation, what’s funny is I also did when I was small, so did my parents, volatile situations were a part of my life. PTSD is not just for soldiers or ‘other’ people, there are hundreds of thousands of children who live with PTSD like I did, like my children do, like my grandson does.

My mother took a decidedly absent role and I was left alone to deal with things way past my pay grade. From her I learned the power of running, it’s a good technique but with not a lot of success for those left behind. As my son reminded and reminded me as he drug me back again and again to a situation that I now know I have to deal with until my last breath if God wills it.

Running and avoidance are the two techniques flowing through our society as people finger point rather than take responsibility for nightmares in their families. Watch intervention shows you’ll see it. Frankly I have wanted to do it. This nightmare of bipolar, PTSD, substance abuse, you name it runs like water through my family and finally I have had enough. I have been broken enough. I have been afraid long enough.

I ran 3 months ago not knowing what to do. I have been dealing with loss for 4 years now. I have swallowed a very bitter pill given to me by those who claimed to love me. There is no doubt life is hard when the pain you feel inside comes from the loss of integrity of those you love. It’s a hard knock life, right?

What is it really? Potential. Life lessons that change the game so profoundly that generations of my children’s children will feel the effects. I am changing the game myself. One of the people I went to for help asked me about my spiritual practice. The point being this person pretended not to know or to think that through this difficult period I do not have God right at the tip of my tongue. Who do you think is holding me together?

2 things happened this morning that helped paved the way for the monumental change my family will experience. I was finally given the sentences I needed to hear that put me back in the game. You see I kept thinking that there was someone out there with more pull than I had, more power than I have to get this job done, to make the change that will allow success were there hasn’t been any before. I was so wrong and the sentences fill me with so much fear. I have to take the reins for myself. The same reins I have been trying hard to find someone to give to, someone I thought more worthy of the job.

I see now that the only way I am going to be able to do what I need to do is to find the strength to do it for myself. The answer was in my own strength, my own desire to change things. The road is hard and it will be often like walking on an edge. Funny really, spiritual teacher teach yourself. My success is finally realizing that the edge I have walked on for so long thinking it my failure is the experience I need to succeed. Walking on the edge is not knowing where you are going, and because you are on the edge you sometimes don’t realize the danger. You can fall off blame yourself and not see the lesson or you can keep walking.

I have known faith I have talked faith I have lived in faith off and on. But my path has become narrow and I am out on an edge. Walking the edge now is walking in faith. To keep walking now is to not know where I am going or frankly how I am going to get there but the word is I don’t have to. I can do it filled with all of the fear in the universe as long as I keep walking not running. I will keep living my life on the edge allowing greatness rather than fear to be my motivator. I think maybe as I get use to being on the very edge I have hated for years it will build excitement for the awesomeness I just can’t see yet, just there on either side of the cliff. And one day the life I am living on the edge will turn into a great foundation for my families future success and none of us will ever fall again.

I don’t like asking for help because for most of my life there has been no one around to ask. When I am standing in shit I get the mop out and clean it up myself because nobody else is going to. I have learned the hard way, over and over again, that people will say what they need to say when you are looking right at them asking for help but when push comes to shove they will be found running the other way. The strong just have to watch the weak bend at the knees making promises they can’t keep. I spend a lot of time swimming in disappointment, as I continue to stand up and take it.

How great would it be to have help. In my fantasy I have a husband to lean on who encourages me, stands next to me when it gets scary. He helps me to take it, not judge it, or try to make it disappear. I might have a dad or other family members who after all of these years would know what I am trying to do to keep my family together and be there for me through the many storms. I might have a teacher or preacher or friend who would be there knowing that the fear I move through is warranted yet necessary. Of course this is all fantasy for me. I hope it’s not for you if you need help.

In the spiritual tradition it is said we can ask for help, Seek and ye shall find, ask and it will be given. It doesn’t say you will get help when you want it or how you want it, just that eventually help will arrive. I am learning that the strength I need that I keep hoping someone will help me gather is something I have to get for myself. If I had to wait for someone to help me I’d still be waiting. Frankly I am still waiting. I have to say it is heart wrenching to watch people turn away from a difficult situation. The disappointment is overwhelming but somehow the help I need does arrive and sometimes it comes in the form of greater inner strength.

What my life has taught me is that it doesn’t matter if help comes or not. When the going gets tough we will either run and hide or stand and be counted. There is no telling how we will react until it happens and how people react to tough situations is the measure of who they are. For me, I stand next to my children through thick and thin, sickness and health and I will do this for anyone who claims me for their own.

And when it gets overwhelming and it will, I will get down on my knees and ask for help from the one place I know will respond, at some point, somehow.

I am living this day filled with quiet desperation. I am so tired of humans behaving badly and telling the rest of us to lighten up. It seems that it has been determined in some room somewhere that our word is no longer meaningful. We can say whatever we want about whatever we want, however we want, whenever we want and of course there will be no consequences because, “I have the right to say what I want,…”

They feel they have the right to decide for themselves what rules and laws they will follow. Let’s not mention integrity because whatever they choose to say at any given time is their right and they fall over themselves with the ever popular, “I was just kidding” “I didn’t mean it’. “Can’t you take a joke?” Everyone wants the get out of jail card, nobody wants to work towards or for anything, take take take. My word, what word?

Though electronic media offers spell check, auto correct, and a delete button it doesn’t not offer a filter for stupid things said or written. People are very brave with their words when spoken through a device, like I said we can’t mention integrity, on screen you can be who you want, say what you want, and all under assumed names, brave!

I am tired of the entitled human mind, what is mine is mine what is yours is mine if i can get it. The entitled will decide which humans are humans and which are here for their pleasure to do with what they want and which humans are here just to support their whims. “I will take everything there is to take off of this earth however I want because it was put here for me and to hell with everyone else”. They make puppets out of other people, slaves out of other people, and will take what is in your hand if they decide they want it or need it more than you.Their word is good for one thing only, taking.

We would all be best served paying more attention and holding people to task but, more importantly I would love it if the citizens of the planet finally stood up and realized there is strength in numbers. Gangs know this and use it to their advantage knowing in their world there are plenty of cogs for their machine, more takers hoping for a piece of their pie which they may never live long enough to see. We could all stand up and demand that our leaders speak with integrity and truth or be removed. We could demand the removal of takers from office, from the business world of finance, takers who are teachers, takers who are parents, takers who are leaders.

All of us together could make a difference but we have heard that before haven’t we?

Why aren’t people more invested in what’s going on? Why have we let integrity go? Again more importantly why has the idea of being a man/woman of your word gone? Family members say stupid things and tear things up and all with their words, reputations are ruined by someone’s word, lies are spread by someone’s word, truths are hidden by someone’s word, it’s a terrible thing and mighty stupid. Someone is determining for us how the word should be used and we just sit back in our electronic fog and let it happen.

I want to feel hope and I know in the end the takers never win. The universal laws maintain that balance is always maintained in our world. But today I am overwhelmed with quiet desperation over the loss of those around me whose word means nothing, living in a world where many others have no clue to the power of their word, or how it cuts like a knife.